


Sorrow is a Lovely Word

by Spinning Place (buttercups3)



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, Grieving, Sex, Spoilers for Season 4, but really all of this could just as easily be made up, something in here might be considered slightly spoilery for season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 02:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2292809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/pseuds/Spinning%20Place
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last in a series of losses renders Tony numb, but he learns Mary can be surprisingly comforting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorrow is a Lovely Word

Not since the funeral has he seen her. On that crisp, barren day her china-white skin reflected the colorless sky, her brown eyes—almost amber in sunlight—instead appeared opaque, hooded. His mother’s death tilled a new field of misery in her, or so he dreads. His ashes are her dust; his mother, her Matthew. After all, they sleep together, and lovers pool each other’s grief, don’t they?

In fact, they haven’t shared a bed since he lost Mama, but Mary’s meeting him here at the hotel: their usual nest. He shivers as he leans out the window into the sleet, cigarette lit, filling his lungs so deeply of tobacco that he nearly chokes. Grey on grey—mid-winter clouds dribble onto the filthy cobblestones below. The drab scene rather suits the melancholy he wishes he would just feel, getting it over with. This vexing numbness is not Tony, who feels in embarrassingly sincere, complex braids of emotion. Part of him fears when he finally breaks it will be inside of her; he will smother her, drive her away for good.

At her brisk, no-nonsense knock, he finds he can’t quite turn. She knows to enter anyway. It wouldn’t do for passersby to see him greet her at the door. With a hoarse, abortive attempt at the loveliest word— _Mary_ —he gives up and continues smoking, his eyes wet and unfocused on the textured sky. Always a mystery how the mere nearness of a person you love can summon the most inaccessible emotions in an instant.

She is beside him, fingers ghosting over the cotton of his sleeve—tentative at first because she knows grief—then sliding up to soothe his always-scratchy cheek. He accepts her tenderness, letting his jaw fall heavily into her firm, chilly grasp, but still, he can’t look.

Sensing her arched eyebrow at his cigarette—she’s never seen him smoke—he manages, “Would you like one?”

“No, I don’t think so, Tony. And since when do you smoke anything but cigars at the card table?”

Forcing a chuckle, he extinguishes it in a crystal astray. “Everyone smoked in the navy.”

Finally, he turns and leans in the windowsill, meeting her eyes. They are chocolaty warm, concerned for him. He was worried for nothing. Her smart, new bob juts out beneath a maroon hat that brings out the tempting blush of her lips.

Tony feels his eyes crinkle in an almost-smile. He takes her hands and rubs them in his. “So cold, darling. Did you forget your gloves?”

“No, but it’s quite frigid out.” Her voice is deep and rich, slightly rough around the edges from travel.

“Would you like some tea? How terribly ungentlemanly of me not to ask sooner.”

“No, it’s quite all right. I had some when I arrived downstairs.” She pauses and so penetratingly scrutinizes his face that he drops his eyes to investigate her pretty fingers laced in his. “Tony, you can talk to me of sorrow.”

With a sharp exhale he shakes his head. “It’s not what I feel. Not exactly. I simply feel… alone. I’ve no family now. Everyone is gone but me.”

“You’re not alone.” Her sympathetic words sting his chest.

“It’s oddly liberating you know,” he gazes up at her from under his eyelashes. “Here we are having our tryst, and not a single soul on earth could care for my reputation. Not beyond the gossip anyway.”

“Yes, how liberating for you!” Mary sniffs in a half-laugh and folds her arms to lean beside him in the window. Abruptly she shivers. “My goodness, we’ll both catch our death. ”

“Sorry, love. I’ll start a fire, and we can warm ourselves in bed.”

As Tony coaxes a spark to a happy crackle of heat, he listens to the rustle of her shedding clothes behind him. She knows how he loves to see her. When he turns he really does smile. Palest skin just kissed by the golden fire glow. Rosy nipples. All elegant slopes and subtle angles. He’s no longer worried he’ll be possessed of any emotions except love and desire.

Crossing the room, he crowds her against the canopy bed, lips wandering over her lips, her neck, sucking lightly at the dip in her clavicle. He cups the silky weight of her breast and then trails down to her belly, as she braces herself with both hands on the post above her head.

When he gazes up at the creamy skin stretched thin across her ribs, his breath audibly hitches. Dipping into the curls at the meeting of her thighs, he inhales her intoxicating lavender and sweat. They moan together, as he begins to lick and finger her, warm and dripping. She drapes a thigh over his shoulder to let him in, his tongue finding her entrance and his thumb rubbing circles above. She shudders and groans gutturally—right there, if only he doesn’t stop. Harder, faster, he works her up until she melts down into his arms, shaking.

As he holds her, stroking her hair now damp with sweat, she laughs at her wanton display.

Finally, she regards him rather sharply. “Why on earth are you wearing so many clothes?”

“Was distracted,” he mumbles to her wrist as he kisses its pulse point.

They make quick work of buttons, sleeves, trousers. Tony is hardly surprised to see his arousal has seeped through the thinnest layer of cotton. One corner of Mary’s lips turns up as she squeezes the outline of his erection and then migrates fingers beneath his waistband, seeking velvety hardness. He throbs and groans, leaning his forehead on her shoulder, while she strokes her other hand through his raven curls.

In a moment he gasps, “To bed. Otherwise I fear a dreadfully disappointing finale.”

She chuckles and kisses his hair, lingering momentarily as if she has a reciprocal infatuation with his scent. Then they burrow under the feather-stuffed blankets, entangling long limbs, Tony’s hardness pressed against her thigh. She pushes him onto his back and straddles him, threading him into the hot, tight space of her most delicate muscles. Tony bites his lip and holds her gaze, thrusting upward with increasing desperation. She pins down his chest with both hands, rolling her hips hard.

Every muscle in his body coils up, before he seizes and spills inside her, flinging his arm over his face with a throaty moan. Slowly he feels her fingers curl around his forearm and wrest it aside.

“Don’t hide from me. I love to see your face when you finish.” She smiles at him with a sort of admiring intensity.

As the sleepy warmth of his orgasm spreads over him, he closes his eyes and sighs. Then, without warning, pain returns. It tightens first his chest and then creeps up his throat before settling cold into his jaw.

She must sense the change, because her palm is at his cheek again. He covers her small hand with his.

“Tony… I want you to know that if you do need to just cry or scream or rage, you can with me. I would be a hypocrite to judge you. I know I’m not giving you what you want. I’m not your wife. But I’d like to at least give you something you need.”

Tony cracks open an eye and presses her knuckles to his lips. Everything hurts except where she is touching him. “This is what I need, but… thank you.”


End file.
